Wednesday, June 18, 2008

BBC NEWS | Technology | Changing the way we think

A timely round-up of the recent "think different" wave of articles and blogosphere debate

Greenfield argues that the visual stimulus we get from screen-based information and entertainment differs so markedly from that available to previous generations that certain areas of the brain, specifically those areas that are older in evolutionary terms and retain the capacity to alter as a result of experience, may be affected in ways that express themselves a changes to personality and behaviour.

It's an interesting hypothesis, and one that has the virtue of being experimentally testable, unlike many other claims about the effect of modern living on human psychology.

And it is a model that Nick Carr uses to support his rather broader viewpoint that our intellectual faculties are being damaged by the internet in his latest essay for the US-based Atlantic magazine.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Changing the way we think

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